Chimayo

That was not enough time in New Mexico. My heart is still back there. Christmas is the luck of the draw each year, with D's work schedule. Then it was eyeglasses that fell out of a pocket and a day lost to replace them (a long story), my little brother's delayed flight from the east coast with all the snow, and it all meant we didn't get our annual overnight or two in Chimayo and Santa Fe.

We did have the family Christmas we all needed so badly, the long visits and going to sleep and waking up in our old house with the well-loved faces at breakfast, so, no complaints. Except that I am still longing for the two-day, peaceful interlude in northern New Mexico that recharges me for the rest of the year.

We made the most of our one afternoon and night, and after some time in Santa Fe, we got to Chimayo just at dusk. We went to the final night of the nine-day Las Posadas at the Santuario. I'll never forget it. I hope R is old enough to remember some of that night.

First they say the Rosary (only the Joyful Mysteries) inside the tiny chapel of Santo Nino de Atocha, the holy Christ child, with the baby shoes lining the walls. (The tradition is that when you leave a pair of shoes from a baby who has just learned to walk in front of Santo Nino de Atocha, you return in the morning to find the soles scuffed and worn. Santo Nino has worn them as he travels around all night doing good deeds.) Then Mary (on a real donkey) and Joseph--two high school kids from Chimayo who are descended from the original families--process to the Santuario singing Vamos a Belen. Joseph knocks three times on the wooden door with his heavy staff, and the pilgrims (los peregrinos) sing a version of the Posadas song:

In the name of the heavens
I request lodging from you,
Because she cannot walk,
My beloved wife.

From inside the church comes the reply:

This is not an inn,
Go on ahead
I can’t open up for you
In case you’re a crook.

(los Peregrinos):

I’ve asked you for lodging
Dear innkeeper
Because the mother is going to be
The queen of the heavens.

(The Innkeepers:)

Then if she is a queen,
Who requests it
How is it that at nighttime
She’s traveling so alone?

(Los Peregrinos)

My wife is Mary
Queen of the heavens
And mother who’s going to make
The divine oath.

(The Innkeepers)

You are Joseph
Your wife is Mary
Come in travelers!
I didn’t know it.

And everyone sings:

Blessed is the house
That shelters today
The pure virgin
The beautiful Mary.

Enter holy pilgrims
Receive this haven
That although it’s a poor dwelling
The dwelling…
I offer to you from the heart.

The door is opened and everyone files into the church for Mass. Afterwards there were homemade bizcochitos and hot chocolate.

It's much smaller and more intimate than I expected. There seemed to be only a couple of other people who weren't local members of the church. We waited awhile until it was time for Las Posadas to start, and walked around the grounds and went in and out of the church. The silence, the cold air, the smell of pinon fires, and the crooked Christmas lights and farolitos growing more defined against the adobe walls as the sky turns black, made my eyes well with tears. I was so happy to be there with my husband and my little girl. Santa Fe and Chimayo have always been such a solitary experience for me. I can't take off whenever I want any more, and spend as long as I want. But when I do get to go, they're with me.

While we waited for Las Posadas to start, we talked to the jolly gray bearded priest in the tiny church office who had a "Maryland" logo on his jacket. (He was from Takoma Park, and knew about my college in Annapolis. He had even spent some years of his childhood in Aurora, near Denver.) As we made one of our turns around from the river up to the church, we saw him standing outside looking up at the sky. I was too shy to walk up and talk to him. I wish I had. I wonder what he thinks about after he has talked to all the people who travel to Chimayo and he watches the seasons change and the pilgrims come and go, and daily life go back to the local families.

It was all local families pulling into the dirt parking lot in their pickups. One pickup screeched to a stop next to us as we walked to the chapel and a Northern New Mexico accent shouted "Is the play tonight? What time is the play?" It struck us funny that someone would think we would know. "Um, the internet said it starts at 6? But the doors are still locked." The grey bearded priest pulled up a second later in his own pickup "Aren't the doors open yet?" Just then everyone got out of their pickups and he said "Follow them!" He was heading down the hill to say Mass at Holy Family parish.

R is learning the Rosary this year in first grade, and she seemed to really like reciting it in that beautiful chapel. Although, among the forty and the six year old knees, guess who complained about the hard, narrow wooden kneelers? She loved the procession and seeing Mary on a real donkey. She snuck around to pet the donkey's nose while they were waiting for the procession to start, and I let her even though I had a vivid mental image of a rearing donkey and a ruined Posadas that was all our fault. It made me laugh so hard when she found herself, after the magical donkey procession and the singing, suddenly inside a church with the familiar words starting up and whispered to me in anguish "MASS? We have to go to MASS now?" I was so much older when I finally learned to love Mass and look forward to it, and I really sympathize. But what made me love it so much as an adult was the memories of hearing those words going back as far into time as I could remember, standing and kneeling and standing and kneeling, with my family next to me. So I think she'll be ok.

I will remember the voices raised in the Rosary, ragged and faltering, some ahead, some behind. Joseph pounding on the old wooden church door three times as it echoed in the icy air, and the utter silence as we filed into the church. The smiles of the ladies who had baked the bizcochitos as they handed everyone plates with Christmas napkins and two thick cookies cut in star shapes. Those are the best cookies, made with lard and anise seeds. Looking at the hole with holy healing dirt and a child's red plastic spade to scoop it out, and regretting that I had forgotten to bring anything to take some dirt home in. Turning back around to see R scooping it into the pockets of her coat and looking up at me, "For Grandma! I want to bring some home to Grandma."

As we left the church with our styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and plates of bizcochitos--(honestly, I could never bring myself to cook with lard, but after tasting those cookies, I would never fault anyone who does)-- the snow was just starting to fall. We had parked down below the church and had to walk along the river to get to our car, and R was laughing and running ahead and catching the snowflakes on her tongue. It was pitch black, no lights at all. We heard a snorting and whinny and thunder of hooves, and found ourselves up against the fence of a horse corral. We could barely make out a beautiful sorrel horse with a broad stripe of white on his nose. R was beside herself. He came right up and let her pet him. She wanted to give him her bizcochito and we reluctantly told her no. He cantered along the fence and whinnied softly. They were just enchanted by each other. Suddenly he took off, his hooves thundering in the soft dirt, galloping all around his pen. R was shouting with joy, and we were laughing at how excited she was and kind of thrilled ourselves, because horses are LOUD in the dark. The snow started falling faster, and he followed her all along the fence to the car and whinnied as she got in and she was crying because she didn't want to leave him. "Why can't we take him home? I'll feed him. I'll give him my own food! I'll never let his water bowl get empty. I PROMISE." We told her he belongs to the friendly Father that she liked so much. (who does he really belong to? I don't know.) And that Father would feel as sad if we took his horse away as she would feel if someone came and stole Charlie. She said she would write a letter to the Father and tell him the horse wants to be with her. She was mad halfway back to Albuquerque. But she told Grandma the next morning that she met a horse who really loved her but he belonged to the Father and she was going to let him stay there. I took photos blind in the dark, aiming the flash at where I heard the horse. When I saw the photos, there were crosses woven into all the links of the fence. All sizes and colors, hundreds and hundreds of crosses.

Christmas Pageant

The school pageant was last night, and R was a Star lighting the way to Baby Jesus. This is before we left the house. She had just finished crying because her costume was bugging her and she was nervous that she would make a mistake in the show and everyone would laugh at her.



It was a lot of fun and she remembered her lines and did great. A late night for a school night. Then an unpleasant end to the evening--two shampoos to get out all the glitter, and a lot of wailing.

And that's it for posts for awhile, because we are taking off for . . .

Our 6th Annual Cookie Decorating and Posole Party

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day

Today is the fifth day in a row that temperatures have fallen below zero.

We've had these on the upstairs windows, on the inside panes behind the storms, for almost a week.
Ice feathers

I woke up thinking about Auden's poem, "In memory of W.B. Yeats":
"He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day."

The weather makes life feel serious. Not as dour or deserted as Auden's dark cold day, but grave and austere. Daily things are critical. There's a feeling of free-fall as the mercury sinks. I get out of the car and walk R all the way to the door of school because if I didn't see her go inside and watch the door shut behind her, I would feel uneasy all day. The last two nights I've woken before dawn with a terrible dread that I forgot to bring Charlie back in after his last trip outside. I have to get up and check in his crate to see his little sleeping body before I can go back to sleep.

On the way to school today, the wind was blowing swirling drifts of snow, in big puffs across the frozen field where there is an iris farm in spring. I was trying to remember the Galway Kinnell poem about smoke and snow. I looked it up when I got home. It's from "Two Seasons":
"I spoke to you that last winter morning
Watching the wind smoke snow across the ice."

That's exactly what it looked like, someone slowly and dreamily exhaling puffs of smoke across the ice.

R likes to stand on the bed and look and look through the crystals. She says it's the Snow Fairy's palace.

When I was little I would sit on the counter in the bathroom and open the mirrored medicine cabinet until it made a tunnel with the wall mirror, a long infinitely repeating icy corridor. I would walk my finger down it and pretend I was in an ice castle.

Last week, R made a bird feeder from a crayon box and filled it with bread crumbs and seeds and hung it outside, so the birds could reach food if the ground was too snowy. I asked her if she thought that that the window crystals were a message from the Snow Fairy, to thank R for taking care of her wild animals. I didn't think she would take it seriously, but now she opens the storm window to write "thank you" in the ice on the outer window. She leaves little notes and gifts for the Snow Fairy before she goes to sleep.

I didn't see her put this on her windowsill last night, and she was upset this morning that the Snow Fairy hadn't taken her gift. "I got mixed up, I put Tooth Fairy, but it's not, it's the Snow Fairy. Is that why she didn't take it?" I asked her why she chose those things to give, and she said "They're just some toys that I still like, but I want her to have them." I talked her into keeping the toys and just leaving a note next time.

400 Below Zero

This is from our local news website this morning. Look, it's minus 434 in Denver!

Bringing home the Christmas tree

Saturday was a short respite from the bitter cold and snow that has been most of December so far. We brought home a tree that is the only perfectly symmetrical one I've ever had. It almost doesn't look real, it's so conical and perfect. I'll post more pictures later.

Then Sunday we decorated the tree. Notice how there are no ornaments from Charlie- level on down. I hope that after his puppy year we can decorate the whole tree again. I love the Christmas tree smell. Walking down the stairs or in the front door you get hit with a wave of that familiar, sharp, cold, foresty scent. It still makes me think of a scratch and sniff book I had when I was little. Which in retrospect smelled more like Lysol than a real tree, but I loved that matte green illustration of a pine tree. I scratched and sniffed until I wore it down to the white paper beneath. The next page was a candy cane, which was almost as good.

I believe this Santa hat is on backwards. I'm not sure why R is being so prim. She might be thinking about Santa watching her behavior.

Down below zero tonight, and a lot more snow on the way tonight and tomorrow. The furnace is roaring on every few minutes. I'm dreading driving to school tomorrow. I'm going to pull the down comforter over my head and try not to think about it.

Dumpling Bento

She also had milk and a Clif Kids bar.

Thanksgiving

We had D's brother, my cousins, and their families--even two doggie friends for Charlie. It was a beautiful day. 60 degrees, so the kids could play outside without coats.


Each family brought part of the meal.





The kids' table had paper to draw on, favor bags and a nametag filled with crayons.


Juice tastes so good when you've been running around outside.

Pie is very good also.



Thank you God, for family, for home and enough food to share, and for all our blessings.

Sunday in the Park

We have a lot to do to get ready for Thanksgiving, but we took off for a few hours this afternoon.



Charlie finds it hard to relax in a park.


I love the Colorado winter sky. The blue and the rosy amber, the way it stretches out all around you.

Peach Turnover Bento

I made the turnover with this:

I found it in the clearance section at TJ Maxx on Tuesday for $3.50. It's so much fun. I can't wait to make empanadas, pierogi, gyoza, calzones . . . what doesn't taste good encased in a little dough package? I can make them with whole grains and healthy ingredients, and R will always eat them. But they take so long to make by hand that I rarely do it. I watched some videos on YouTube to perfect my gyoza-pleating technique, but it still takes me forever. This is the next-best thing to having a little grandma sitting in the kitchen cranking out dumplings all day.

Butterfly Bento

Dear Tooth Fairy, I Lost My Tooth But I Swallowed It

Big news at our house yesterday. This is tooth #2.


The tooth fairy came in through the window and left a trail of glitter (fairy dust) and some plastic groceries for R's toy kitchen.

School Bake Sale Cupcakes

The school had a bake sale today to benefit a family with six kids who lost their home and are living in a motel. It was kind of meditative to spend an afternoon piping and sprinkling.

And a good reminder to thank God for my house, my kitchen, my family's peace and security. My box of sprinkles and pastry bags and piping tips that is always in the same place in the cabinet. The stairs we go up at night and the roof we sleep under. I pray that the bake sale family is sleeping under a roof of their own very soon.

And finally, here is today's lunch--heavy on the Vitamin C.